After a flurry of elated, sometimes confusing, reports, authorities have confirmed that the one of the three men killed yesterday during a shootout with Indonesian police in Malang, South Surabaya, was Dr Azahari Husin.

Fingerprint records of Azahari, formerly a lecturer in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in Johor before allegedly climbing up the ranks of international terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah (JI), matched with the bullet-riddled body of one of the three corpses.

The authorities have yet to disclose of the identities of the two other men killed with Dr Azahari.

"We have positive identification based on fingerprints provided by our Malaysian counterparts and also from Azahari's dental and immigration records from the time he worked in Indonesia in 1998," said Indonesian police chief General Sutanto, reports the Star today.

Family members of Azahari in Kuala Lumpur, according to the Malay Mail's front-page report yesterday declined to respond to reports of his death until there is conclusive evidence in the form of DNA tests.

Media updates today told of his kin shunning journalists who had gathered at the houses of Azahari's relatives in Kuala Lumpur and Malacca.

With Sutanto's statement , speculations should end as to whether or not Azahari, among the top names on the list of regional security agencies' most wanted, has indeed been caught.

Sutanto said he was shot before he had the chance to detonate the bomb strapped to his waist.

Other reports, however, indicate otherwise.

ANteve station chief news editor Karni Illyas, a witness of the operation, yesterday claimed that Azahari's body was blown to bits.

This echoed similar assertions by other police figures who said Azahari had blown himself up to avoid capture.

Next targets

For now, Indonesian authorities have already focused on their next 'most wanted' targets, Malaysian Nordin Mohd Top and Indonesian Zulkarnaen Dulmatin alias Noval.

Nordin, also a colleague of Azahari in UTM, was said to have narrowly escaped a police dragnet in Semarang, East Java, that had occurred simultaneously with Wednesday's operation against Azahari.

The Star also quoted Deputy Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan as saying that a special team from Indonesia was on the way to Malaysia to work with local police to trace Nordin.

"We will go through our findings on Nordin together. We will continue our search for him and whoever he and Azahari had recruited," Musa said in the report.

According to a report in the New Straits Times , former Internal Security Act (ISA) detainee Wan Min Wan Mat, also a former UTM lecturer and an alleged close friend of Azahari, had been taken into custody.

Wan Min was identified by Indonesian authorities as the financier of JI's operations in the region, and one of the people behind the Bali bombings in 2002.

He was earlier arrested when he tried to return to his home in Kelantan in September 2002.

JI has been blamed for the Bali blasts in 2002 and 2005, and the 2003 bombings outside the Australian embassy and JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta.